Sea Of Thieves Beta Returns This Weekend (Kind Of)

Sea of Thieves is coming back this weekend for a (closed) stress test Rare

Sea of Thieves will be playable again this weekend! While not an official “beta,” players are encouraged to log in and help stress test the game’s servers before launch on March 20.

According to a post on the official Sea of Thieves website, Xbox Insiders and those who had access to the previous closed beta will be able to login from Friday, Feb. 16 at 5 a.m. and play until Sunday, Feb. 18 at 5 a.m. If you want to get into the stress test yourself, you can pre-order Sea of Thieves for Xbox One.

Unfortunately, the post warns players that their time on the open seas might be rough. Because this is a stress test, participants should expect session interruptions, occasional inability to join games at certain times and issues with using in-game shops. Rare will also purposefully throttle performance at times to simulate outages. It kind of sucks that gameplay might not be great during the stress test, but it is nice that Rare made this announcement beforehand to temper expectations.

Also, if you’re looking for more content than what was found in the beta, you’re going to be disappointed. No additional content will be included in this test, and Rare isn’t looking for gameplay feedback. This test session is purely to see how far Rare can push its servers in anticipation of a full launch.

The post concludes by confirming another beta will take place before Sea of Thieves releases. Rare hasn’t specified whether it will be an open beta for everyone to try out or a closed beta like before, but did mention it would give players “a taste of the wider Sea of Thieves experience.” You can start speculating on what that could mean whenever you want.

So what do you think? Are you going to hit the open seas again this weekend in Sea of Thieves? Are you going to hold off until the next beta to try out the game’s expanded features? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.